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Inside one of NYU’s prominent antisemitism consultants

Inside one of NYU’s prominent antisemitism consultants

WSN uncovered a yearslong relationship between NYU and the Academic Engagement Network, a pro-Israel organization affiliated with the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing groups.

Over the past two years, NYU has faced mounting pressure to address antisemitism on campus — however, the concerns are all but recent. After years of complaints, a 2020 settlement between the university and U.S. Department of Education led NYU to standardize antisemitism training for staff and administrators.

Several of the university’s subsequent initiatives have been closely tied to the Academic Engagement Network, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on promoting pro-Israel policies and practices at U.S. colleges. AEN, which has ties to far-right philanthropies and is sponsored by organizations that work closely with the Israeli government, has partnered with NYU for years as a consultant for addressing on-campus antisemitism.

Through independent investigations and conversations with faculty, WSN found that AEN’s programming may have influenced administrators’ more recent crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech and protests. While university efforts such as arrest authorizations and suspensions have sparked criticism from several on-campus groups, AEN has applauded NYU’s “outstanding” initiatives in recent years. 

AEN did not respond to requests for comment.

Years in the making

The relationship between AEN and NYU dates back at least four years. At a 2022 New York City Council hearing on campus antisemitism, a university administrator testified that senior leadership had held “regular meetings” with representatives from AEN and Hillel International to “identify and create best-practices for addressing antisemitism.” 

This hearing marked the earliest publicly documented acknowledgment of NYU’s relationship with AEN. Three years prior — when the antisemitism complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights that resulted in the 2020 settlement was filed — NYU received a grant from AEN’s fiscal sponsor, the Israel on Campus Coalition, to “support Israel education on college campuses.” 

At NYU, those “regular meetings” included multiple university administrators’ participation in AEN’s Signature Seminar Series, which aims to “engage administrators in intensive learning about the Jewish experience, antisemitism and Israel, and to help them develop strategies to support Jewish inclusion on campus.” The program consists of nine monthly virtual trainings before culminating in a week-long trip to Israel and parts of the West Bank, and has involved NYU each year since 2021. 

Last July, NYU hosted the final phase of the Signature Seminar Series on campus after the usual Israel trip was cancelled due to safety concerns. At the event, President Linda Mills spoke about her “groundbreaking approach to improving the campus climate for Jewish and all students” — three weeks after the university’s most recent settlement was announced.

In 2021, Senior Vice President for University Life Jason Pina, Associate Dean of Students Craig Jolley, Senior Director for Global Spiritual Life Melissa Carter and at least one former administrator at NYU Stern participated in the program. On his second Israel trip in 2023, Pina was interviewed by eJewish Philanthropy and said he partook in the training because he did not have much experience working with large Jewish communities prior to his administrative role.

WSN spoke with CAS English professor Zachary Samalin about conversations he had with Craig Jolley and Jason Pina regarding AEN’s programming. Samalin said that the trainings seemed to have influenced the administrators’ approach to enforcing antisemitism policies, noting one conversation where Jolley said his time with AEN led him to see anti-Zionism more directly as an issue of antisemitism and Jewish identity.

“Craig told me that before participating in the Signature Series, he had separated criticism of Israel and of Zionism from antisemitic speech — whereas afterwards, he was more receptive to treating Zionism as a protected aspect of Jewish identity,” Samalin said. “He told me that it had been an ’eye-opening’ reorientation of his thinking.”

NYU and AEN have maintained a close relationship since protests erupted across campus following Oct. 7, 2023. The organization was named as a partner in establishing NYU’s recently launched Center for the Study of Antisemitism, with AEN board of directors members Miriam Elman and Naomi Greenspan quoted in its 2023 announcement. Elman also praised Mills for NYU’s updated Non Discrimination and Anti-Harrassment guidelines, which designate Zionism as a “code word” for Jewish identity, calling them a “model text for other universities nationwide.

In a statement to WSN, NYU spokesperson John Beckman said the organization did not play a direct role in its NDAH policies. 

“NYU looks to resources both internal and external in opposing antisemitism and any other forms of hate,” Beckman said. “AEN is one organization among many with which we have interacted in our continuing efforts to reduce antisemitism and hate on our campus.”

When Samalin asked Jolley if AEN had any direct impact on the publication of said guidelines, Jolley said that he did not know and was not privy to those conversations.

'A clear position'

In 2023, Elman said that AEN works with faculty and administrators at more than 300 colleges. The group is explicitly pro-Israel and pro-Zionist, with its materials and guidebooks presenting what CAS History professor Zachary Lockman called a “clear position” on the Israel-Palestine conflict. AEN’s most recent guidebook links pro-Palestinian or anti-colonial sentiments with antisemitism, asserting that “perceived shared experiences of oppression” create a “toxic atmosphere where antisemitism can thrive.” 

In interviews with WSN, several other scholars on Israel, Palestine and antisemitism said the organization’s historical interpretations often favor a pro-Israel perspective. In one segment, the guidebook asserts that when students chant “From the river to the sea” or “We support the intifada” — slogans frequently used by pro-Palestinian movements  — “their speech is the eradication of an entire country and the violent murder of its civilians.”

“They take a clear position,” Lockman said. “They’re not a neutral body in any sense, and to invite them in some institutional way to participate in dealing with these kinds of issues, which can be serious issues, doesn’t seem to me the way to try to accomplish that.”

Emmaia Gelman, professor of social sciences at Sarah Lawrence University and founding director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, told WSN that groups like AEN are successful in their efforts to lobby universities because they present themselves as politically neutral civil rights organizations.

“They show up in U.S. politics in the way that we’ve come to expect civil rights organizations to appear, and because of that, sometimes they’re misread as progressive — they’re certainly misread as being advocates for Jewish interests,” Gelman said. “Because the right-wing opposition to protest against Israeli genocide has been presented as if it’s a conversation about defending the civil rights of Jews, it’s really powerful — because colleges and universities have very specific obligations to stand up for identity-based rights.”

Gelman said that this orientation is common among pro-Israel groups, and that they tend to “adopt the mantle” of civil rights organizations. She referenced End Jew Hatred, a nonprofit that has sponsored several lawsuits against universities through its Lawfare Project — an initiative directly inspired by “strategies, tactics, language, organization and funding of minority rights movements” such as Black Lives Matter, MeToo and Stop Asian Hate.

Sean Malloy, professor of history and critical race and ethnic studies at the University of California, Merced, told WSN that AEN is particularly effective because it is staffed by current and former university faculty who understand how to engage with higher education administrators. He said that compared to other pro-Israel groups, they “play the role of the good cop” by adopting a more welcoming and amicable rhetoric. 

“The Lawfare Project will threaten, the Anti-Defamation League will threaten, like ‘We’re gonna expose you’ — but the AEN is like ‘No, we want to help you, let’s work with you,’” Malloy said. “It not only acts as a solution to the problem that has been created by other Zionist groups, but it’s oftentimes, to my understanding, free of charge.”

Malloy said that because of this rhetoric, the group’s biases are often overlooked. Samalin told WSN that, in their conversation, Pina expressed that he had found the people hosting the seminar surprisingly open to challenges and pushback from the administrators present. However, Samalin said that when pushed, Pina said he couldn’t recall any instances where AEN itself presented debate between different perspectives on an issue.

Group affiliations

AEN is part of the Israel on Campus Coalition, an umbrella organization of pro-Israel groups founded in 2002 via a partnership between the Schusterman Family Philanthropies and Hillel International. Hillel International is one of the world’s largest Jewish campus organizations and has maintained a strategic and financial partnership with the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism in an effort to lobby universities on their antisemitism policies — something the organization’s president said had “been very important.” 

ICC did not respond to WSN’s request for comment.

An unpublished Al Jazeera investigation from 2016 also found that ICC Chief Executive Officer Jacob Baime touted using “corporate level, enterprise-grade social media intelligence software” to monitor pro-Palestinian protests and coordinating with the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs. They have continued to monitor student activities in recent years, relaying  their information for the ADL’s assessment of “anti-Israel activism on U.S. campuses.” 

AEN has also worked directly with the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, and its antisemitism-focused companion Project Esther, to research the impact of study abroad trips to Israel. Similar to those used in the Signature Seminar Series, the trips were about a week long but involved students rather than administrators. The study measured participants’ agreement with statements like “Israel is guilty of violating the human rights of the Palestinian people,” and concluded that the trips led to “increased recognition of Israel’s efforts to uphold liberal principles.”

AEN shares several of its board members and donors with prominent right-wing organizations. Elman is a fellow with the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism & Policy, a think tank that has been active in the congressional push to bolster campus antisemitism policies. Several of AEN’s donors, such as The Marcus Foundation, are also affiliated with far-right organizations including Turning Point USA and PragerU. 

Additionally, they have developed subsidiary groups of their own. NYU’s chapter of Faculty and Staff Against Antisemitism, a initiative of AEN, has been active in efforts against pro-Palestinian  protests — including a February guest essay defending NYU’s suspensions of 13 students for their involvement in a Bobst sit-in.

Gelman said it was important to distinguish this ecosystem as a pro-Zionist movement rather than a pro-Jewish one, in order to understand how policies like NYU’s are shaped. She said that right-wing politicians and groups of this vein are often less interested in protecting Jewish communities and instead use this rhetoric to “effectuate right-wing attacks on what they perceive as left-wing educational institutions.”

“They started to make Zionism an identity characteristic in the same way that race, ethnicity or sexuality is,” Malloy told WSN. “By working through those DEI offices, it allows them to bypass faculty who might raise criticism about something.”

The effects of outsourcing

Lockman, who said he had been familiar with AEN “for many years,” told WSN that NYU “should’ve known better” than to seek guidance from the organization in developing their policies on such a nuanced issue.

“To take them seriously as a group which can usefully provide orientation or guidance on how to combat antisemitism seems crazy to me,” Lockman said. “I’m sure there are groups out there which would be more useful and more productive.”

But as it turns out, Pina and Jolley at least really didn’t know — Samalin said that both were surprised when he told them about AEN’s more overt and extreme pro-Israel sentiments, having both felt that the trainings they received were fairly measured and nuanced, if clearly still somewhat slanted.

“They don’t need college administrators to sign on to every single tenet of what they believe, they just need them to do a set of specific things that are designed to shape the terrain of the debate,” Malloy said. “They’re not asking for complete fealty to the Israeli state.”

Samalin said that Jolley told him that he had previously lacked the knowledge to discuss Israel-Palestine with any level of depth, and that Pina said he had not heard of Zionism until a few years ago. According to Samalin, Jolley said that while he initially felt well-prepared to engage with students about the issue, he has since found it challenging to have productive dialogue. 

“No one wanted to talk to anyone,” Jolley allegedly told Samalin.

When Samalin asked Pina and Jolley whether they had considered partnering in a similar vein with Palestinian organizations or Jewish organizations with an opposing viewpoint, both said they were not aware of any, though Jolley said that he felt confident that there would be individual administrators that would take that opportunity to learn more.

“We already have plenty of brilliant colleagues here at NYU who could provide that education, we don’t need to outsource their expertise,” Samalin said. “Universities form relationships with an organization like AEN so they don’t have to think about Palestine, or about Zionism or anti-Zionism, in any substantive way. Our administration has effectively outsourced their capacity to think through this problem.”

Contact Hope Pisoni at [email protected].

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